


Piccola

by DegrassiFanatic



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:02:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27679127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DegrassiFanatic/pseuds/DegrassiFanatic
Summary: Dad’s unoccupied hand travels down to her left hip and before she knows it, he’s pressing a firm hand against her open wound. A loud cry escapes her lungs that echoes through the forest. The ache that Prentiss described earlier is long gone, replaced by the sharp, incessant pain. Feebly, she tries to push Dad’s hand away but, all he does is continue placing firm pressure on the injury, ignoring the way blood gushes between his fingers.“Dad, it hurts.” she sobs out, “Make it stop, Dad, please.”
Relationships: Emily Prentiss & David Rossi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41
Collections: General Manager at the Wendy’s in Fairbanks





	Piccola

**Author's Note:**

> this was already on my tumblr but i decided to put it out on ao3 too even though we all know gen fics never do as well as pairings.

Starting from just above her left hip, a burning pain spreads across Prentiss’s abdomen that wraps around her whole torso. She’s laying on her back. Above her, she can see the vast canopy of trees and the small space where branches don’t touch. She can see the night sky peaking through and if she was more focused, she could probably point out a constellation or two. Rocks dig into her backs sharply. Distantly, she wonders why she is not wearing her Kevlar vest. 

Prentiss trails a hand down absently to the source of the pain. She feels something wet spread across her palm and as she pulls it up to the night sky, she can blood glinting in the moonlight. 

Scrunching up her nose at the sight of it, Prentiss languidly wipes her hand clean on the grass beside her.

In an effort to catalogue her surroundings, she tries to lean up onto her shoulders but her attempts are immediately thwarted by a white-hot pain that cinches her muscles together. Clenching her teeth, she lets out a quiet hiss as she falls back down to the ground. 

As she rides out the searing sensation at her stomach, she tries to figure out how she got hurt, why she even went into the forest in the first place. There’s several gaps in her memory. Knitting her brows together, Prentiss tries to recall what she did in the morning today and comes up short. 

As she tilts her head back even further, she lets out a defeated sigh. All she can infer is that she was on a case and it went terribly. And now all she has are the trees and the night creatures for company. All she can do is lay here and wait for someone to find her before she bleeds out. 

Black dots begin to dance on the edges of her vision. The incessant pain in her abdomen dulls down to a tolerable ache; the same way her wound had before she died after being stabbed by Doyle.

If Prentiss had the energy to panic, she would.

She doesn’t want to die. Not again. There’s only so many times someone can play the get-out-of-death-for-free card and her doctors would agree with her on that. 

She doesn’t want to die. Not here. Not alone. 

Is this how Tsia had felt before she died? Jeremy, too? What about Sean? And, oh God, poor Matthew, he wasn’t even an agent, he wasn’t trained to handle pain.

Tears leak out of the corners of her eyes as she remembers all of them and how it felt like a gut punch every time she found out another person from her old life had died.

She remembers sweet Matthew, who didn’t deserve to die alone and scared. Not when he made sure fifteen year old Prentiss wasn’t alone and scared in that clinic waiting room, in that church all those years ago. 

Dying doesn’t seem so terrifying anymore, not if it meant Matthew wouldn’t be alone anymore. Then again, Prentiss thinks, why would Matthew be in an afterlife he stopped believing in when he was still alive. 

He deserved a long life, he deserved a good life. And Prentiss should have helped him get that, she should have helped him with his drug addiction. The same way she should have helped Reid with his.

Reid was just a kid, the same way Matthew had been, and just like with Matthew, Prentiss let him down too.

She let everyone down. She let Garcia down. Morgan too. And Rossi. She let them all down the moment she allowed her friends, her _family_ , visit an empty grave.

If Prentiss had just woken up earlier, maybe she could have stopped them from burying her. 

She should have fought JJ and Hotch more to stay in America, to stay alive. She should have kicked and pleaded and sobbed. She should have ignored their stupid reasons for her leaving. Who cares about her safety?

Doyle already robbed her of her friends, how could she have let him rob her of her family too? 

The only thing that kept Prentiss in Paris was the thought of putting their lives at risk. If only for that, she can forgive herself for never getting on an airplane back to Quantico.

After seconds, minutes, maybe even hours, she hears the sound of leaves crunching under footsteps. 

For a moment, she contemplates hiding. She doesn’t deserve to be saved, not when she put her family through all of that. 

“Emily?” a voice calls out but it sounds so muffled, as though someone is placing their hands around her ears, “Emily, oh God!”

The only reason Prentiss doesn’t follow through with the temptation is that moving would require immense amounts of assistance.

Though her vision is blurring and black spots are still dotting her eyes, they don’t impede the sight of someone crouching beside her. 

Whoever it is, is clearly a man. His hair is dark but she can see a couple of grey hairs shining in the moonlight with every slight turn. He’s got a beard. There are lines and wrinkles all over his face from a life well lived. 

She can still smell the expensive cologne that somehow hasn’t faded away from the overwhelming scent of the forest. 

One of the man’s hands slip down to the top of Prentiss’s head. The touch is familiar. The calloused fingertips scratch pleasantly at her scalp. A ring with a thick band glides across the strands of her hair as he switches to a caress afterwards.

“Emily,” the man calls again, “Open your eyes. Please.”

She hadn’t even noticed she closed them in the first place. After some exhaustive efforts, she opens her eyes again to find the man hovering over her face, far closer than before. 

“Dad?” she mumbles.

The hand stroking her hair stops for a moment and for a second, the pain of being injured is nothing compared to the ache at the loss of the touch.

However just as quick as he stopped, he starts back up again. 

“Yeah, kiddo,” he says, _Dad_ says, “It’s me.”

Dad’s unoccupied hand travels down to her left hip and before she knows it, he’s pressing a firm hand against her open wound. A loud cry escapes her lungs that echoes through the forest. The ache that Prentiss described earlier is long gone, replaced by the sharp, incessant pain. Feebly, she tries to push Dad’s hand away but, all he does is continue placing firm pressure on the injury, ignoring the way blood gushes between his fingers. 

“Dad, it hurts.” she sobs out, “Make it stop, Dad, please.”

“It’s alright. It’ll be over soon. We just need to wait until the ambulance is here, okay? Then, this will be all over.” he explains slowly like Prentiss is five years old again, asking why he can’t make it to her talent show, “I just need you to be strong for me.”

_I just need you to be strong for me._

Dad had said those same words to her before he divorced her mother and walked out on seven year old Prentiss without a second look. He hadn’t even fought for custody of her, he didn’t even want visitation, he didn’t want anything to do with her. He hadn’t called her on any birthdays or Christmas’s or graduations. He left her with a woman who wasn’t capable of loving anyone but herself. 

But he came back. After all that time, Dad still came back. He still remembered her. He still loved her. 

“Dad,” she says, enjoying the way the word felt on her tongue after years of never using it, “Thank you for being here.”

“There’s nowhere else I’d be, _piccola_.”

That was strange. Dad didn’t like nicknames. He hated it when her grandmother would call her Emmy. He didn’t even like it when she would call her sweetheart. He’d always say the same thing, that there was a reason she was named Emily. 

Wait a minute.

Dad didn’t know Italian.

Dad didn’t know any language other than English and a couple of words from Hebrew. 

“ _Piccola?”_ she asks as she squints up at the man above her.

“Spencer said you were getting jealous of me calling him _piccolo_.” Rossi explains with an affectionate smile, “Said you wanted a nickname too.”

**Author's Note:**

> pls pls pls come to my tumblr, degrassi-fanatic, i am dying of boredom on there


End file.
